The wolves kept me company for as long as I stayed in the woods. I wasn’t worried for my safety though. They moved through the trees — not between, but through, incorporeal as mist which scattered and reformed again on the other side. I was quick to realize they were not real, or at least, not of the world I had grown accustomed. I believe they were real in their own world, which must overlap with our own, and would still be hidden if not for the strange transformation in me.

Ghostly shapes in the moonlight, never close enough to touch, but always touching me through the emphatic link we shared. I felt the primal urge of the hunt rising up in my own will. The feeling frightened me. If I went back too soon, perhaps I would act on it in a way beyond my control. I’d been afraid for my life for so long, but this was a new kind of fear.

“Okay so let’s say you ARE real,” I said to the wolf. Its eyes looked like little holes in reality: burning emptiness in space, draining and pooling the surrounding mist. “Let’s say you exist in some energy world that I wasn’t sensitive to. Then my gene therapy started making a new kind of protein that was able to sense… whatever you’re made of.”

The wolf listened to me, cocking its head to the side. Its head was much larger than my own. Ghostly as it was, I still tried not to look at the fangs.

“So I’ve been hearing thoughts. They must be sensed with the same kind of energy too, passing unnoticed through the air. But I notice now. Let’s say all of that really is true.”

The wolf lay down on the ground, resting its magnificent mane of swirling mist on its front paws.

“Then why is it that you see me?”

The wolf looked over its shoulder into the woods. It turned from me as it rose into a crouch, hairs raising along its back, mist flowing upward and dissipating into the night.

“And if you can see me…”

A low growl rose in its throat. It would have been bad enough to be the target of that evil sound, but to me it was worse knowing the wolf too was afraid.

“Then what else out there can see me too?”

The wolf only stared into the forest. Nothing revealed itself from this world or the other. But I could feel the presence of something deeper within the tangled woods. Just as the emotions of people overflowed into me, just as I could feel the wolf’s will to hunt, there in the woods rose a throbbing hunger in the back of my brain. A hunger that could eat and eat and never be filled. First a subtle suggestion, then swiftly blooming to infest my mind, consuming my thoughts. There was no part of me which did not feel its pull. I was the hunger in the night.

The wolf before me bolted away from the thing. I hesitated, frozen. I needed to see what approached. I needed to not see it, lest this feeling grow so overwhelming that I sank my teeth into my own arm. Absurd, I would never — yet the emptiness ripped me into a hundred pieces, demanding satisfaction. If it got any closer, I would be gone, whether or not my body remained. I would be gone, and only the hunger would remain. It took all my concentration to discover my feet below me once more. I sprang from the leafy ground, hurling myself into the rhythm of a run.

Gradually my thoughts returned to me as I escaped the unseen devourer. It took what felt like several minutes before I realized I could not feel the thing in my mind. I was so occupied by my own raw emotions that I hardly realized I was alone. It was my own fear which consumed me, my own panic driving me faster than I knew possible for my body to bear. I didn’t stop until I made it back home.

Three days later, I started the fall semester of my junior year in high school. Much to my relief, and a little disappointment, the intensity of my symptoms faded in the days following my injection. By the time my father dropped me off for my first day of class (I knew how to drive, but didn’t have a car), I couldn’t even make out the words of his thoughts while he sat right next to me. All I felt was an uneasiness and suspicion, which I only made worse with my moody silence.

“You’ve got everything you need? Books? Pens? Something to eat?”

“It’s the first day, Dad. The teachers know better than to expect high schoolers to come prepared.”

“And your breathing is normal? When is the last time you measured your oxygen levels?”

“Let me at least pretend to be normal this year.”

“It’ll take more than gene therapy to do that.”

His eyes smiled. I felt his laughter which never made a sound. I hoped he could feel my silent gratitude, because I didn’t want to say it. Every time we were together, I could feel him suspecting that I experienced more symptoms than I admitted. I was relieved to jump out of the car, almost before we rolled to a stop beside the curb.

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“I’m going to be normal this year,” I told him resolutely through the window.

“That’s the spirit, Martin! I’m so proud of what you’ve endured.”

The spirit, I thought. Too much of that already.

“Thanks dad. For everything.”

I was going to be normal this year. I repeated it while I fumbled with my backpack, looking for a schedule of classes. I’m going to be normal, as I blended into the sea of unfamiliar faces in the great concrete building. A glance, a smile, a cold glare — and with it the whispers of their thoughts in the back of my mind. No one is going to know me as the kid with problems. My first class was chemistry, something I should definitely know more about, considering the things I’ve been putting into my body. Second floor, I climbed the stair with the crowd, no less human than the rest.

I’m not going into the woods again. It was all I could think about, sitting in the back row. The teacher wasn’t here yet, and some of the other students were striking up conversations and cracking jokes. There were two boys ahead of me talking about a movie I saw last week about a pirate demon hunter. I was about to join in, but I was struck by the sudden fear that I would accidentally reply to something they thought instead of what they said. That’s all it would take on the first day to never be normal ever again.

I bit my tongue and stared at the desk. It was going to get easier. The symptoms were going to fade with time. If I could just make it through the first few days without drawing any attention myself, then I wouldn’t make a dumb mistake like that and end up being an outcast.

“Do you know about him?” A soft voice from the small Asian girl I hadn’t noticed sit down on my left. She was the only one wearing a uniform — a formal jacket and a red tie.

“I don’t know anything.” Quick. Defensive. What had I let slip already?

“About the teacher,” she said patiently.

I shook my head, mute. I felt the tug of her thoughts, curious and probing blindly into my mind. I didn’t want to feel them. I didn’t want them in my head.

“My name is Lei.”

“Martin.” I stared at the desk in front of me. I know that must seem weird, but it was all I could do to focus.

“Well… Martin.” She spoke slower now. Great, she thinks I’m a dimwit. I couldn’t help but be embarrassed to even look at her though, knowing I heard more than she ever said. “I’m only asking because there was a last minute substitution. You know how Dr. Chancler is listed on the schedule?”

“Uh.”

“Well it doesn’t matter, because he’s going to be teaching physics this year instead.”

“Uh huh.”

“So I was just wondering if you knew —“

“Nuh uh.”

“The new teacher Doctor Warmal.”

“So nice to see you’re feeling better, Martin,” came my doctor’s familiar voice.

I was staring so intently at the desk that I hadn’t even noticed him enter the room. But he found me straight away — almost like he knew to look for me.

“You’re not my teacher,” I said bluntly, in shock. I didn’t try to stop myself from feeling his thoughts. I had to understand why he was here. But I felt nothing. No whisper of thoughts, no emotion, no sensation. Doctor Warmal must be over seventy years old, his graying hair in full retreat. When he grinned at me, I felt like I was staring at grade school bully, looming over me and basking in his own power. So why couldn’t I feel his gloat in my mind?

“I often teach classes at the university, actually,” Doctor Warmal said. He straightened his blue jacket and leaned back. His feet were firmly planted in front of my desk though. There was no uprooting him.

“Not high school.”

“Why not? Did you ever ask?” I didn’t need to read his thoughts to know he was enjoying this game.

I was conscious now of the eyes of the entire class on me. So much for going unnoticed for the first few days. I was getting agitated, nervous. I tried to stop it. Tried to focus on my desk again.

“You didn’t think I would teach this class just to keep an eye on you, did you?” He chuckled out loud this time. What was his problem? Didn’t he know what he was doing to me?

I could feel the whispers all around now. A girl in the front row giggled, followed by a hushed murmur. Then more giggles. As my awareness shifted around the room, a flood of thoughts began to assault me from every side. None of them were clear on their own, but together they formed a wave of emotion and scrutiny which crashed down, threatening to drown me.

I needed air. I needed space. What were they all staring at? How long HAD it been since I checked my oxygen levels? My heart was going faster. I didn’t know if it was the medication, or the situation, but I needed out.

“The little fibber pretended not to know you,” Lei said from my other side, bemused inflection to her voice.

“Martin? Are you alright?” Doctor Warmal asked. He was closer now, leaning over my desk. His face only inches from mine, but I still couldn’t feel a thing going on inside his head.

My mind was searching, delving, desperate for answers. And there, somewhere in the empty pit in front of me, I felt the warmth of his hidden flame. I immediately recognized the hunger, snarling, wild, insatiable. And yet it was concealed as well, hidden beneath layers of protective thought, so deep the Doctor himself might not know it was part of him. For a moment I was back in the woods, the chill of the night wind on my skin, the growling of the wolf at my side. I was cowering beneath the raw emotion which leaked the dungeons deep within Doctor Warmal. Although in that moment I doubted whether he was a man, for only a beast could contain that endless hunger.

I must have had another fit — my first once since my father’s medication. The strain of the moment locked my muscles, my vision blurred, my breath frozen within my chest. The class was gone, the doctor gone, the lights out. All that remained was the hunger. It must have only been a few seconds, but I heard myself screaming as though from the bottom of a stone well, a long way away. And then in the back of my thoughts, whether mine or from elsewhere I do not know — I felt the growl. I felt the howling of the wolf. The sound brought clarity, somehow chasing the hunger from my mind.

Next I was aware, I was standing, heaving for breath. My wooden desk was overturned and pushed away. Doctor Warmal had retreated half a dozen steps, a curious smile on his face. Everyone was staring. I was a wild animal when I raced from the room, doing all I could to suppress the howl building from deep within my chest. I had to get away from the hunger. I had to get away from that doctor, that class. I had to disappear, or hurl the rest of the world into a pit so that I may live on without them.

How could I ever return to school now? Racing down the hallway, leaping down the stairs four at a time, I didn’t intend to.

So much for being normal this year.